Why?
by Tostie
Summary: one-shot - Post-OotP – slightly OOC Harry – After an exhausting fifth year Harry is back at his least favourite place. The hour is late, but he cannot sleep as too many questions plague his mind. Just what is Harry thinking about?


_The one with the power to vanquish the - Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…_

Those words those thrice damned words, even weeks after hearing them for the first time they still haunted him. Even now as he lied on his bed in his small room of his summer residence as he tries to sleep he would hear the words of his former second least favourite teacher, the words that caused the madman known as Voldemort to come after his family on that fateful Halloween night all those years ago and murder his parents before attempting to kill him, but he was unsuccessful and instead of dying alongside his parents, he, Harry Potter became the first survivor of the killing curse and became known around the country as the-boy-who-lived. At age of one he was arguably one of the most famous wizards of the British Isles.

He himself would not learn about all that for nearly a decade however as Hagrid, under orders of the headmaster of Hogwarts took him from his parents' home and brought him to his last remaining blood relatives on his mother side; a Muggle family by the name of the Dursleys; a placed where he would spend the next decade in completely unawareness of his magical heritage.

Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes. It seems sleep would elude him again tonight. He could do nothing about it. He just had too much on his mind; Sirius´s death, his friend's close call with death, and all the things the headmaster told him in his office.

Although surprisingly the first had more or less became bearable to think about. While it had hurt a lot when the realisation that one of the last links to his parents had truly passed on, Harry in his weeks of solitude he came to realise that he and Sirius really hadn't been all that close. Which considering the short time they had spent together really shouldn't be that strange. Harry definitely would miss him, but the news that he was the one prophesised to defeat Voldemort once and for all was something that definitely preoccupied his mind a bit more right now.

Harry just didn't get it; how was he, a wizard that was still a few weeks away from his sixteenth birthday supposed to defeat a dark lord so terrifying that most don't even dare utter his name, a wizard not only decades his senior, but also one strong enough to go up against the like of Albus Dumbledore as an equal. In comparison to that he was no better than a first year that had just learned his first jinx.

According to Dumbledore he should be able to beat him because he had the ability to love. Harry snorted at the thought. If he hadn't been so distraught at the time he probably should have questioned the man about that at the time. How was love going to do anything against Voldemort? Was he supposed to hug him to death or something? If so then his uncle or cousin probably would do a better job.

Another near silent snort escaped the dark-haired boy as he imagined his uncle hugging a 'freak' to death. It may not be a very realistic thing to imagine, but then again neither was the thought of him winning against Voldemort as he was now. He may have gone up against Voldemort several times and live since he has re-entered the magical community, but after having a front row seat to the Dumbledore- Voldemort duel he did not delude himself in thinking he could come even close to that level anytime soon.

'Love – the power he knows not – intend based magic perhaps? No that didn't make sense if that was true then any light wizard should be able to cast it … wait' he thought. 'If love is the power he knows not, then anyone capable of love should be able to beat him right?'

Harry groaned, all of this didn't make any sense. Dumbledore knew he was prophesied to defeat Voldemort so why wasn't he trained? Then another thought accrued to him.

''_You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.''_

Dumbledore had known, he had known how the Dursleys would treat him. Yet he still placed him there; he placed the one capable of defeating Voldemort with Muggles that would hate him. He placed the one who was supposed to use the power of love with people that hated him … that didn't make any sense.

Why … why … why?

The more he thought about it the less sense everything seems to make. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but as the weeks passed Harry really started to wonder what the hell his headmaster had been thinking all those years ago on Halloween.

Lately besides all the questions regarding the past another question had started to appear on the forefront of his mind.

_Why should he even try and fulfil the prophecy? _

Because it is the right thing to do was probably one of the first thing that came to him, but to be honest after all the shit that happened to him these last few years it became harder and harder to care.

Another answer he had come up with was for his friends. At first he thought that as long as Voldemort was alive they would be in danger, but as he really thought about it he realised that almost every time his friends had gotten seriously hurt it had been because he had gone after Voldemort. The best thing he probably could do for them was to go to Gringotts, empty his vault and give each of them part of it so they could flee the country because if Dumbledore was right and Voldemort could only be beaten by him and 'the power of love' …. well then they were screwed.

There were other reasons to try and fulfil the prophecy of course. For one Voldemort was the murderer of his parents, but to be honest Harry never met them and as such it was pretty hard to want revenge for them and what little he did know about them he highly doubted they would want their only child practically commit suicide by trying to kill their killer.

Of course there were all the Muggles, witches and wizards that would suffer if Voldemort was not stopped. At some level Harry wanted to help, but another part, a darker part of him, one that was born due to years of emotional neglect and verbal abuse just wanted him to say, ''I am out of here for once solve your own problems.''

While he knew it or not when he left the Dursleys for Hogwarts at the age of eleven, Harry had had some serious emotional issues. Few people if anyone at his new school had learned about this however as Harry had long since learned not to show weaknesses, but things changed as weeks passed and he gained his first ever friends. This changed something inside of him his fake smiles because more genuine, his desire to protect was born as he tried to keep the first people that were nice to him safe and overall his fake persona more or less became real.

But those last two years had really been hard on him; him being chosen as Tri-wizard champion, Ron's betrayal, being shunned again by most of the school, Voldemort's resurrection and Cedric murder, the summer in isolation, the smear campaign against him, being ridiculed at school for being a attention seeking liar, Dumbledore avoiding him, Snape's 'lessons', Umbridge's 'detentions', Sirius's death and …. the prophecy

Harry could normally have dealt with all those things; he had done so in the first three years of Hogwarts after all, but back then he also had happy moments in between and now it seem ever since the word cup his life seem to be a constant stream of one negative event after another and each and every one of them fanned his darker thoughts while chipping away at the persona that had been him ever since his first year.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. He really could use some sleep right now. Perhaps after a good night sleep he would finally be able to answer some of the questions that had been plaguing him.

* * *

**Author notes: **

Been a while huh? RL has been a pain so I didn't have much time to write, but now I should have some more time and will be going back to regularly updating FWAC, but before that I wanted to write this little thing to get back into the rhythm of things.

This was a interesting fic to write. To be honest it is pretty damn hard to get into cannon!Harry's head and imagine his thought proses. This is especially true for first year!Harry maybe it is because it's been awhile since I was eleven, but it is just very hard.


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